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Azure Storage offers three primary services suited for different storage scenarios:
  • Block Storage (Azure Disks): Persistent disks for VMs or Kubernetes Data Disks
  • File Storage (Azure Files & Azure NetApp Files): SMB/NFS file shares for lift-and-shift or shared volumes
  • Object Storage (Azure Blob & Data Lake Storage): Massively scalable unstructured data store
The image illustrates three Azure storage categories: Block Storage (Azure Disk Storage), Object Storage (Azure Blob and Data Lake Storage), and File Storage (Azure Files and Azure NetApp Files).

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1. Block Storage – Azure Disks

Azure Disks provides high-performance block storage with multiple SKUs to fit your IOPS and throughput needs. As you move from Standard HDD to Ultra Disk, performance and cost both increase. Premium SSD v2 slots in between Premium SSD and Ultra Disk for balanced performance.
Disk SKUBacking MediaMax IOPSMax Throughput (MB/s)
Standard HDDHDDUp to 500Up to 60
Standard SSDSATA SSDUp to 6,000Up to 200
Premium SSDNVMe SSDUp to 20,000Up to 900
Premium SSD v2NVMe SSD (v2)Up to 80,000Up to 2,000
Ultra DiskNVMe SSD (ultra)Up to 160,000Up to 4,000
The image compares different types of block storage (HDD, Standard SSD, Premium SSD, Premium SSD V2, Ultra Disk) based on IOPS and throughput in MB/s.
Premium SSD v2 cannot be used as an OS disk.
In AKS, Azure Disks mount as ReadWriteOnce, so a disk is accessible by a single node at a time.

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2. File Storage – Azure Files & Azure NetApp Files

For workloads requiring shared file access, Azure Files offers fully managed SMB and NFS shares:
SKUProtocolsBilling ModelThroughput / Latency
Standard (HDD)SMB / NFSPay for data usedLower throughput, higher latency
Premium (SSD)SMB / NFSProvisioned capacityHigh throughput, low latency
The image compares two file storage options: "Standard" with 300 MBps and "Premium" with 10 GBps, highlighting differences in latency and pricing. It also shows a storage capacity indicator from 100 GB to 1 TB.
If you provision 1 TB on a Premium share but only use 100 GB, you pay for the full 1 TB.
Consider Azure NetApp Files for enterprise-grade performance and multitenant workloads.

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3. Object Storage – Azure Blob & Data Lake Gen2

Azure Blob Storage is designed for massive volumes of unstructured data. You can select performance tiers (Standard or Premium) and enable a hierarchical namespace (ADLS Gen2) for analytics workloads. Four durability options ensure data resilience:
Durability OptionScopeCopies & Replication
Locally Redundant Storage (LRS)Single region3 copies within one data center
Zone-Redundant Storage (ZRS)Single region, zones3 copies across availability zones
Read-Access Geo-Redundant Storage (RA-GRS)Multi-region primaryLRS + read-only in paired region
Geo-Zone-Redundant Storage (GZRS)Multi-region, zonesZRS + geo-replication to another region
The image illustrates a concept of "Geo-zone Redundant" object storage durability, showing a region with multiple availability zones represented by cylindrical icons.
In AKS, mount Blob Storage (including ADLS Gen2) directly into pods or containers with the [Blob CSI driver][blob-csi-driver]. This enables native file-system access to logs, images, documents, and other unstructured data.

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